IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/coecpo/v15y1997i3p42-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interest Rates, Rate Spreads, And Economic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • JOHN S. LAPP

Abstract

Interest rates and the spreads between interest rates are widely regarded as useful indicators of the future level of economic activity. This paper shows that when these series are divided into (i) an ordinary time series process and (ii) the effects of extraordinary disturbances, only the extraordinary disturbances predict economic activity. These disturbances are associated with periods of monetary policy intervention. Most of the predictive power is in contractionary disturbances that have persistent effects over time. The results imply that the predictive power of interest rates comes primarily from periods of contractionary monetary policy and is not due to ordinary movements in interest rates.

Suggested Citation

  • John S. Lapp, 1997. "Interest Rates, Rate Spreads, And Economic Activity," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 15(3), pages 42-50, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:15:y:1997:i:3:p:42-50
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-7287.1997.tb00476.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1997.tb00476.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1997.tb00476.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chu, Joonsuk & Ratti, Ronald A., 1999. "On the relevance of distinctions between anticipated, unanticipated expansionary, and unanticipated contractionary monetary policy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 109-131, March.
    2. Ben S. Bernanke, 1990. "On the predictive power of interest rates and interest rate spreads," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 51-68.
    3. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    4. Balke, Nathan S. & Fomby, Thomas B., 1991. "Shifting trends, segmented trends, and infrequent permanent shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 61-85, August.
    5. Spencer, David E, 1989. "Does Money Matter? The Robustness of Evidence from Vector Autoregressions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 21(4), pages 442-454, November.
    6. James Peery Cover, 1992. "Asymmetric Effects of Positive and Negative Money-Supply Shocks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1261-1282.
    7. Boschen, John F & Mills, Leonard O, 1995. "The Relation between Narrative and Money Market Indicators of Monetary Policy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(1), pages 24-44, January.
    8. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988. "How Does Macroeconomic Policy Affect Output?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(2), pages 433-494.
    9. Tobin, James, 1972. "Inflation and Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 1-18, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John S. Lapp & Douglas K. Pearce & Surachit Laksanasut, 2003. "The Predictability of FOMC Decisions: Evidence from the Volcker and Greenspan Chairmanships," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(2), pages 312-327, October.
    2. Kodongo, Odongo, 2024. "Bank performance and real sector productivity in East Africa," KBA Centre for Research on Financial Markets and Policy Working Paper Series 77, Kenya Bankers Association (KBA).
    3. JG. Gonzalez & RW. Spencer & DT. Walz, 2000. "The term structure of interest rates and the Mexican economy," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(3), pages 284-294, July.
    4. Jorge Gonzalez & Roger Spencer & Daniel Walz, 2003. "A contemporary analysis of Mexican stock market volatility," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(10), pages 741-745.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 1999. "Does Money Illusion Matter? An Experimental Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 184, CESifo.
    2. Masagus M. Ridhwan & Henri L.F. de Groot & Peter Nijkamp, 2010. "The Impact of Monetary Policy on Economic Activity - Evidence from a Meta-Analysis," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-043/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Karras, Georgios, 1996. "Why are the effects of money-supply shocks asymmetric? Convex aggregate supply or "pushing on a string"?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 605-619.
    4. Altavilla, Carlo & Gürkaynak, Refet S. & Quaedvlieg, Rogier, 2024. "Macro and micro of external finance premium and monetary policy transmission," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(S).
    5. Zakaria Babutsidze, 2012. "Asymmetric (S,s) Pricing: Implications for Monetary Policy," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 177-204.
    6. Hany Guirguis & Martin B. Schmidt, 2005. "Output Variability and the Money-Output Relationship," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 4(1), pages 53-66, April.
    7. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    8. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2001. "Does Money Illusion Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1239-1262, December.
    9. Randall E. Parker & Philip Rothman, 2004. "An Examination of the Asymmetric Effects of Money Supply Shocks in the Pre--World War I and Interwar Periods," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 88-100, January.
    10. Gogas, Periklis & Pragidis, Ioannis & Tabak, Benjamin M., 2018. "Asymmetric effects of monetary policy in the U.S and Brazil," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Davide Debortoli & Mario Forni & Luca Gambetti & Luca Sala, 2020. "Asymmetric monetary policy tradeoffs," Economics Working Papers 1742, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2023.
    12. Davide Debortoli & Mario Forni & Luca Gambetti & Luca Sala, 2020. "Asymmetric Effects of Monetary Policy Easing and Tightening," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 146, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    13. Anna Florio, 2005. "Asymmetric monetary policy: empirical evidence for Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(7), pages 751-764.
    14. John Ammer & Allan D. Brunner, 1995. "When is monetary policy effective?," International Finance Discussion Papers 520, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Anna Florio, 2004. "The Asymmetric Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 409-426, July.
    16. Phil Bodman, "undated". "Are the Effects of Monetary Policy Asymmetric in Australia?," MRG Discussion Paper Series 0406, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    17. Murillo Campello, 2002. "Internal Capital Markets in Financial Conglomerates: Evidence from Small Bank Responses to Monetary Policy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2773-2805, December.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/53r60a8s3kup1vc9l564lcia3 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Sun, Rongrong, 2014. "Review over Empirical Evidence on Real Effects of Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 58513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Ball, Laurence & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1994. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Economic Fluctuations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(423), pages 247-261, March.
    21. Xie, Jin, 2020. "Capital-market consequences of asymmetric output-price rigidities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 221-239.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:15:y:1997:i:3:p:42-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.